pickThis has been hanging out on my tbr shelves for a long time, and I finally dove in. Written by a white woman who works as an antiracism educator and trainer, the book focuses on the myths and false ideologies that keep white people from being able to acknowledge their own internal racism and be able to confront and discuss racism. A lot of gut checks while reading this one as she pushes the reader into a productive and necessary discomfort!
bailedI had to bail on this one. It seems like a really good book, but I‘ll have to read the physical book. This book is so dense that with the audiobook, the words go in one ear and out the other.
“DiAngelo illuminates the phenomenon of white fragility and “allows us to understand racism as a practice not restricted to ‘bad people‘. Referring to defensive moves white people make when challenged racially, white fragility is characterized by emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and argumentation and silence. These behaviors then function to reinstate white racial equilibrium and prevent any meaningful cross-racial dialogue.”
^p78 twisting language to preserve white character‘s agency & perspective in “To Have and Have Not.” Wesley can‘t even yell “Fish!”—Harry has to “saw he had seen” the fish.
“A better, certainly more graceful choice would have been to have the black man cry out at the sighting.” Observations, small details.
P30 “The ability of writers to imagine what is not the self, to familiarize the strange and mystify the familiar, is the test of their power.”
pickStrong piece. “American Africanism” as an OTHERED Blackness, a “fabricated presence” as foil for white characters. 1992
P77 “Eddie is white, and we know he is because nobody says so.”
P93 “Studies in American Africanism, in my view, should be investigations of the ways in which a nonwhite, Africanist presence and persona have been constructed—invented—in the United States, and of the literary uses this fabricated presence has served.”
#DecemberDreams
A Malcolm Gladwell #WhiteStack already set up and ready to go 😁
Yes, it‘s uncomfortable to be confronted with an aspect of ourselves that we don‘t like, but we can‘t change what we refuse to see.
so-so
